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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/27/18 8:50 AM, Carrie A. Eaton
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi all,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Does anyone have a good protocol or a
standard policy (part of your CMP) regarding the shipping of
very tiny microfossil mounts? Think small things mounted to
SEM plugs, conodont slides, little bits that could decide to
make a break for it while being shipped via FedEx, etc. Feel
free to email me off list – I’m all ears for suggestions,
standard policies/stances on this, etc.<o:p></o:p></p>
<br>
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<p>Entomological specimens are - arguably, at least - among the most
fragile objects one can ship, and we do it all the time. Think
about shipping a 100-year old mosquito back and forth in the mail
without losing any legs. It mostly comes down to shock absorption.
A box with pinned specimens will normally have about 6 inches of
packing material on all sides, like packing peanuts and/or bubble
wrap. We use enormous outer boxes, but they weigh next to nothing.
The inner packaging details are dependent upon the weight of the
specimens; a box of mosquitoes is just specimens on pins, but a
box of grasshoppers or scarab beetles will involve using numerous
extra pins to "brace" each specimen from rotating or having their
pins pop out of the foam substrate. One loose specimen becomes a
miniature wrecking ball, so there needs to be <b>no possibility
of anything moving around freely</b>. A really secure box won't
even have more than a few mm of clearance between the heads of the
pins and the inner closure, to prevent pins coming out of the
substrate. Parts or whole specimens are often mounted in small
glass vials, or on microscope slides, and the same basic rules
apply; each vial or slide is in its own compartment in an inner
package, with a lot of outer packing material.</p>
<p>For SEM stubs, if you can't contain each stub separately (which
is what I'd be tempted to do, myself), then you'd need some way to
prevent the stubs from popping free; from what I recall of the
plastic holders for SEM stubs, there's a significant gap between
the stubs and the lid, and you'd need to put something resilient
into that gap, like a small piece of thin bubble wrap, to restrain
the stubs. It may not be so much a matter of established protocol,
but improvisation.</p>
<p>Hope this helps,<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html">http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a>
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82</pre>
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